This invention relates to processing citrus fruit for extraction of juice separately from fruit peel for further processing.
There are known citrus-juice extractors, but none with effective and efficient separation of juice from peel for further separate processing in a manner taught by this invention.
Examples of known related but different juice extractors are described in the following patent documents. U.S. Pat. No. 3,185,072, issued to Rickard on May 25, 1965, described a juice extractor having a perforated platform on which flat faces of halved citrus fruit were placed while domes of the halved citrus were pressed down to squeeze juice of the fruit through apertures of the perforated platform. Although efficient for getting most of the juice, it spread apart and tore the peel. This allowed high-value peel oil to escape and be squeezed into the juice with wasteful contamination. U.S. Pat. No. 3,106,152, issued to Coffelt on Oct. 8, 1963, described a continuous fruit press that was effective for crushing grapes but wasteful and contaminating for juicing citrus fruit. U.S. Pat. No. 2,575,584, issued to Cohen on Nov. 20, 1951, described projecting suction tubes into citrus fruit for sucking it out, but without high effectiveness. U.S. Pat. No. 2,247,190, issued to Edenfield on Jun. 24, 1941, described a fruit juicing machine which halved citrus fruit, placed in cut-face-down on a conveyor belt and then squeezed it from opposite sides by oppositely disposed rollers to cause juice to run vertically down out of the halved fruit. The rollers were referred to as rotatable extracting elements and pressing means. U.S. Pat. No. 1,985,323, issued to McCall on Dec. 25, 1934, described a citrus fruit juice machine having two side-by-side top conveyor belts and two side-by-side bottom conveyor belts converging in a "V" channel for conveying and crushing halved citrus fruit vertically. A vertical slitting knife between the side-by-side top and the side-by-side bottom conveyor belts halved partially squeezed citrus fruit to position fruit halves as cut for being top-to-bottom squeezed for exit of juice laterally from a progressively squeezed cut side.